Summer [V 40–50]

Right at the beginning of spring in the next summer season, the Argives noted with mounting concern that the envoys the Boeotians had promised to send did not arrive, that Panactum was being destroyed and that the Boeotians had made a private alliance with the Spartans. They therefore became afraid that they would be isolated and that the whole alliance would go over to the Spartans. They supposed that the Boeotians had been persuaded by the Spartans to destroy Panactum and to enter into a treaty with the Athenians; and they imagined that the Athenians knew all this, with the result that it was no longer possible for them to make an alliance with the Athenians, though they had previously hoped that while Athens and Sparta remained at odds with each other, even if their treaty with the Spartans did not survive, they could at least become allies of the Athenians. The Argives were therefore at a loss what to do in this situation. They were afraid that they might find themselves at war simultaneously with the Spartans, Tegeans, Boeotians and Athenians, having previously declined to accept a treaty with the Spartans, indeed having even entertained the proud fancy that they might become the leading power in the Peloponnese. They therefore now sent envoys as quickly as possible to Sparta – in the persons of Eustrophus and Aeson, who they thought would be the ones most congenial to the Spartans – taking the view that in the present circumstances it would be best to make an agreement with the Spartans on whatever terms possible and then be at peace.